


Blame David's Pining Playlist

by PenzyRome



Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, Pining, dont let the summary fool you this is mostly fluff, ft. davey goes to juilliard and jack goes to nyu and daveys roommate is so very tired, medda is basically daveys second mother and i love it, t and up for swearing, this is just sweet stuff that i wrote instead of sleeping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2019-03-20 10:21:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13715643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenzyRome/pseuds/PenzyRome
Summary: David was very good at platonic relationships and at Keeping Things Heterosexual. But then again, he was having an anxiety attack to his best friend's mother because he realized that he liked said best friend, so. Maybe he wasn't that good at it.





	Blame David's Pining Playlist

**Author's Note:**

> "penzy. please. stop writing javid fluff at midnight." "no bitch" anyways enjoy

     Irving Hall Theater, the theater that Jack’s mother quite literally ran, was probably not a good place for David to have an anxiety attack related to Jack. And Medda Larkin, Jack’s mother, was probably not the best person to have said anxiety attack in front of.

     But, well. There he was. Not the best decision he’d made, not even in the top three hundred. But of all the places to have a oh-no-I-like-my-best-friend-as-more-than-that anxiety attack, the theater made sense. It was David’s happy place, the one place he could think, where he understood what was going on around him and felt in control. And Medda was like a second mother to him, not to mention almost anyone else who had walked into her theater.

     That didn’t resolve the fading anxiety attack of its cause, though. Damn. He truly thought that sixth grade him was just going through a sexuality crisis when he’d wondered what being married to Jack was like. But college him was stable in his knowledge of “Yes, I am very gay,” and here he was, thinking,  _ Jack has such nice penmanship. I bet he could do the calligraphy for our wedding date announcements himself. _

     That sent him into a whole new spiral of crying into Medda’s shoulder, and she rubbed his back and hummed something Gene Kelly sang. When he finally pulled himself together like the almost-grown-ass-man he is, she pulled back an arm’s length to scan him carefully.

     “What’s wrong?” she asked, and he was so absurdly grateful for her in that moment. She never tried to guess, she never assumed. She just asked and she supported, no matter what. Jack was lucky to have her.

     Jack. Damn. He looked down at the little nick in the stage and tried to get it over with. “I like Jack. More than I should. Not like I should. Like I-want-to-kiss-him like. And. Well.”

     She seemed to understand everything else and pulled him back into a hug. He accepted it and buried his face in her shawl. She sighed and seemed to silently debate something.

     “Honey, can I say something you might not believe?”

     He sat back and gave her a disbelieving look. “Throw it at me.”

     “My son is mad about you. He has been since you two were in high school.”

     “Would it be rude to say I don’t believe you?” he said, and Medda laughed.

     “It’d be normal. You’re twenty, you don’t think you’re worth liking. I was like that too. But you are.” He glanced to the side, and she placed a hand on his shoulder. “It’s hard, I know, but Jack looks at you like you hung the moon and stars. And for what it’s worth, I absolutely approve of you.” They both laughed, David’s a bit watery, but it was a laugh nonetheless. “I’d love to see those Julliard genes in my grandbabies!”

     “A regular Evans, that’s what I am!” They both broke into a louder bout of laughter, Medda’s deeper as David rose up an octave into half gleeful, half nihilistic giggles. Medda shook her head slowly.

     “Kid, if my son passes up a chance with you, he’s just plain blind.”

     David mumbled something he made sure Medda couldn’t hear and escaped as soon as possible, listening to the pining playlist he hadn’t used since eleventh grade.

     Medda as a mother-in-law would be fantastic, he thought. Too bad that involved Jack actually returning his feelings. Damn those technicalities. If Jack could just fall in love with him quickly, that’d be great, thanks. David would really appreciate it.

     Also, his roommate was getting tired of his pining playlist. Which was dumb, because David was at  _ Julliard,  _ he clearly had good taste in music, but whatever. His roommate could tell Jack to fall in love with him already, and then he could listen to his happily-in-love playlist instead.

     The third time his roommate yelled at him to shut off his pining playlist, David flipped him off through the wall and decided to be productive for once in his fucking life. Like a blessing from heaven, while he contemplated calling Sarah for the fourth time, Race, the one dance major he’d ever gotten along with, texted him to tell him that he had a date and he had to ditch his practice room, so if David wanted it...

     And yes, David wanted it. Race’s usual practice room was fantastic, maybe a little echo-ey and bad for recording in, but as dance rooms went, soundproof enough and reasonably spacious. So he collapsed the legs of his keyboard and put it on a rolling dolly and pounded out angry notes in a dance practice room, as one does.

     He warmed up on simpler songs, most classical with strong melodies, and then moved onto jazz, then pop to really warm up his muscle memory, and then rolled straight into soundtracks, leafing through a binder of sheet music and thinking half-heartedly as he worked through some Sondheim that dance practice rooms are quite good for making sure he doesn’t look like a fucking fool while he plays. Once he was reasonably sure he remembered how a piano worked, he actually started working, pulling out several drafts and trying to figure out why they sounded awful when he was sure they were going well yesterday.

     It’s an accident that lead him to a breakthrough. He almost swore when he hit a sharp and then stopped suddenly, tapping the key frantically before he mutilated his sheet music to change every single C to a sharp. He played it over and almost split his face open with a grin, content for a moment to switch his focus to lyrics. With the melody down, lyrics flowed easily, and he replaced his mechanical pencil’s graphite stick three times before he finally ran out of ideas. His pencil stopped in the middle of his fourth page of binder paper, and he gaped.

     He really needed to start measuring out his creative energy so that he didn’t gas out after one magnificent burst. He tried to go back and play it through while he sang, but winced after five measures and decided to use the room for its intended purpose.

     David wasn’t brilliant at dancing. He wasn’t even close to Race’s level. If he’d tried to get into Juilliard on dancing alone, he wouldn’t have. But he was good, and he was flexible, and it calmed him down, and it was a good way to use up any energy he had with a little on-the-spot choreography. Plus, it would really suck if he had wasted hat money in high school.

     So he put on a high-energy playlist and started stretching. When his first dance song was from Lemonade Mouth… well, he didn’t complain. He just free-styled and had fun.

     He was halfway through internally freaking out that he still remembered the High School Musical choreography when someone knocked on the door. Pausing “I Don’t Dance” (lord, he felt old,) he opened the door and wished he had stopped to not look sweaty.

     “Jack! Hey! What’s up!”

     Jack shrugged. “Nothing much, my professor cancelled class and I hadn’t seen you in a few days, and Race said you were in here, so…” David stepped aside so he could walk in. “If you’re busy, I can leave.”

     “No, no, no, stay!” David could have slapped himself, but he continued. “I was just dancing for a while to get my songwriting and composing energy back.” Jack nodded, smiling, and picked up his sheet music from the stand in front of his keyboard.

     “This what you have so far?” David nodded wordlessly, and Jack set it back down, patting on the stool. “Play it for me! Please?”

     David smiled in spite of himself and sat down, cracking his knuckles before he exhaled and started playing. Starting off with slow chords and speeding up, he glanced over to Jack, who was sitting cross-legged and wide-eyed. He trailed up, starting low and ending on one quick, high note, and focusing on his music, he started singing the lyrics that he’d had scribbled on post-it notes and whiteboards for weeks.

     He didn’t focus on what he was saying, but what he was  _ saying.  _ Which he knew made no sense. The lyrics were all about infatuation from a distance that became love, attraction that became something deeper. Which he recognized was probably not a great song to sing for Jack, but he stuck to what he knew.

     Besides, he was genuinely proud of it. It was a classic power ballad, starting out deep and longing before it sped up and crescendoed into a fuller, brighter sound, and slowed down to a quiet, happy ending. And considering Jack was watching him, he did remarkably well for having just finished that draft of it. He finished with one final quick note and sat in silence for a second, punch-drunk on the experience of actually not fucking it up, before he turned to Jack, who looked caught between terror and awe.

     “Jack?”

     Jack shook his head quickly, like he was waking up. “That was.. that was amazing.. shit, I.. that was so great, I need to go, I, Medda needs, I uh…” he grabbed his phone and practically left a dust outline of himself as he ran out, David still staring at him.

     David stood up, thoroughly confused, and bit back any feelings of hurt as he shrugged to himself and reached for his phone.

     And then heavy footsteps approached his door, and Jack was back, standing at the threshold, breathing heavily out of what seemed to be more stress than exertion.

     “Uh… You alright, Jack?”

     Jack opened his mouth, as if to say something, before he clamped it back shut, and David’s confusion only grew. “Well, if you’re just going to stand there, I’m--”

     He cut off abruptly when Jack flew forwards, crushing their lips together. He was retreating back in just a moment, and David grabbed his hand, because what the fuck, he couldn’t just do that and then run away again.

     “What the hell was that? Fuck, if you actually like me, please say something or kiss me again or some shit, because you know I’m really awful at understanding subtext when you use it!”

     Jack decided to kiss him again, and frankly, David didn’t have a problem with that. The messy talking things could be figured out later, because right then, Jack’s hands were on his waist and they were kissing like there wasn’t going to be a tomorrow.

     After only God knew how long, Jack pulled back and rested his forehead on David’s shoulder. David tried to be serious for a moment, and least quiet, but couldn’t help but laugh.

     “If I’d known writing a love song was all I needed to get you to kiss me, I would have done it weeks ago, you know.”

     So maybe Medda was right. She was also going to be insufferable. David was very much looking forward to having her as a mother-in-law, and even more so to having Jack as a husband.

     Yeah, maybe he was getting ahead of himself, but… Jack felt permanent. He felt like the first really good decision that David had made since following his reckless dream and applying to Juilliard.

     And David was looking forward to every second of the future.

**Author's Note:**

> if youre interested in hearing about my Actual Base Schedule, i shouldnt have much out (unless i get any prompts) until my next long piece, which is katherine-centered and will be maybe a little longer than Saving Lives and Long You (?). then im embarking on a multi-chapter piece that im really excited about!  
> if you wanna hear me vauge about my writing process or talk to me, my tumblr is @penzyroamin! hope you enjoyed, if you comment ill owe you my soul and seven fritos


End file.
